Instead of using purely flashpunk I’ve decided to use a 3D renderer I wrote that kind of lobotimises the flashpunk framework but kind of still fits called Flashpunk 3D (has no official relation to the flashpunk project and i’ll change the name when I have time to think of a new one if anyone cares).
I decided to do a space game last night but trying to do the assets in 2D has resulted in more than enough headaches due to my awful artistic ability, while I feel I can competently do really really low poly stuff ok. The general theme of the game is Elite/Escape Velocity only without anyone else in the universe with you, with an emphasis on survival. There hopefully will be a sweet upgrade system and a procedurally generated universe so I better get cracking!

Hey fellas, I haven’t been able to do these recently due to pressing other matters that I won’t get into, but i’m totally glad to be able to do it again and can’t wait for this whole jazzamatazz to get started!
This time I will be using:

• Flash via AS3 via FlashDevelop, using the flashpunk library and possibly the Box2D and Box2FP libraries.
• Either Musagi or Reason 4 for music or procedurally generate it
• BFXR for sound effects
• Photoshop for art
• Ogmo editor for levels if it fits.
• Chronolapse and probably something else for community related habidashery

I totally hope Kittens wins because it’s hella rad and stuff!

Good luck and good luck gentlemen!

I’m sure someone will get excited at seeing this post but they really shouldn’t, i’m just disclosing ahead of time a game I wrote ages ago that does some random music generation using the C blues scale, it currently has no way to save it out other than recording externally so it’s probably not much use. Either way I wanted to disclose it just in case I run out of time trying to write proper music.

Link: www.billyfletcher.com/LD/BreakdownSrc.zip

It requires SDL 1.13 (or later I imagine, never tested it on anything else). If you want to hear it in action before going through the trials of setting it up to compile you can get the windows installer for the game here.

Lots of love,

brian.

edit: Here’s a picture of my desktop because realistically i’m probably going to forget about community stuff once I start, I can plan otherwise but I just don’t have the time other than quick updates on progress.

I really can’t be bothered to get up to pick it up so I might as well just enter this competition.

I’d do one of those awesome previous LD things but i’ve only taken part in one previously and I think someone else is going to make the obvious glib joke image of a list of 18 LDs with all but one blanked out.

I’ll probably end up using Unity primarily, although if it’s 2D and requires non-physics enginey movement, probably Flashpunk. I probably will also probably not get where I want to get because I probably won’t have much time to do this, atleast it’s not probable. That said every hour spare from moving out of my flat will be spent on this. Disclaimers that mean you don’t have to commit to anything in a post intended to commit you to something are awesome!

Lots of love,
brian.

Well i’ve been stupidly busy at work at the moment so I haven’t really had any time to evaluate how it went properly, so here it is:

Things that went well:

• Graphics – I was overall rather happy with the art in the end, it’s really my first time doing my own art at all (short of modelling some stuff from TRON for fun) and I was surprised at how motivated I was to just continue doing it, i’m usually so terrible with drawing and so on that I tend to rely on others for this sort of thing but with super low-res pixel art it’s so confining it’s hard to get it wrong if you don’t mind stuff looking a bit silly.
• Controls – I don’t want to take credit for Unity’s physics or anything, but this was the first time i’ve done 2D platforming mechanics in Unity and was pretty happy with the result, jumping is a bit weird as I was trying to achieve jump height relative to the amount of time the button is pressed down but apart from that it came off well enough, if a bit heavy feeling.
• Getting it done – I was waylaid by a series of small jobs I had to do around the flat and helping people out with various computer problems, so most of all i’m just happy it was a somewhat complete product.

Things that went badly:

• Sound – Pretty obvious one given that there wasn’t any, I tried to record some basic stuff on my guitar but I couldn’t record it cleanly enough and trying to learn Musagi in the 3 hours I had to do sound proved way too much. I didn’t know about sfxr either so I gave up on sound effects altogether. Next time i’ll be much more ready for this sort of thing and if the theme fits i’ll probably be doing some form of rythm based game.
• Length – Again another pretty obvious problem with it, there’s literally 30 seconds of gameplay tops, primarily due to me building the level with about 5 minutes left and I wanted to make sure it looked right. I didn’t realise you could submit 15-20 minutes late otherwise I probably would’ve had 3-4 levels of significant but repetitive length.
• Dead bodies – Yeah those floating things are meant to be dead bodies, I have no idea how i’m meant to do those properly given the limited amount of pixels but they’re remarkably abstract.

I’m sure there’s other things that went wrong and right with it but those are the main things that come to mind.

Going forward i’m not sure if i’ll continue with it as a game, it’s a rather boring concept and i’m not a huge fan of the cliché’d super hard indie platformer genre, but if people actually want more levels i’m more than happy to implement some of the extra art I did and put together some interesting levels. The theme was fun but I couldn’t really think of anything that interesting to do other than the play on words in the title, but if anyone comes up with any interesting mechanics related to buoyancy and general island jumping I could easily get motivated again.

With regards to the whole debate about Unity/Game Maker/etc i’m a bit on the fence, I’ve done a lot of C++ with SDL/GL/D3D projects in the past and it’s such a laborious, un-fun experience I don’t really have a lot of inclination to take part in a strict competition like that. That said I think each game should be evaluated based on the amount of work gone into it, if you’re using a pre-made engine there should either be significantly more content, or some form of mechanic that would be too time consuming if you had to do the base engine for it too. Then again with that attitude you could end up with people forcing themselves to do contrived game concepts over simplistic but brilliant ideas just to keep up with the joneses. I guess the whole Tech category thing could work but then again that could result in LD being a glorified tech demo event, although it is balanced with the other categories (this was my first LD so i’m unsure as to why it was added then removed previously).

I’ll either be taking place in the Mini-LD this month or in the EGP for this month (High Velocity theme sounds pretty fun to play about with). It’s really fun taking part in these contests and getting feedback, it’s really nice to have people take the time to look at your stuff and give constructive feedback, I tend to be hyper-critical of myself so when people have fun with anything I make it’s a pleasant surprise. I’m working through the list myself and it’s pretty incredible to see how some people interpret the theme and how some people can achieve so much in so little time.

I’m open to collaboration on interesting game concepts (especially if they’re in Unity) so if anyone is serious about a particularly interesting concept or prototype and is capable of finishing products to completion with a high degree of polish i’m more than interested in helping (although with full time work I don’t have a huge amount of time). On another note my company (www.rubixstudios.co.uk) may be looking for a freelance chiptune composer for an upcoming iPhone project so if anyone wants to throw their hat into that ring, PM me here or email me at billy (at) rubixstudios.co.uk.

Lots of love,

Billy ‘brian’ Fletcher.

Well I made it through my first Ludum Dare with something resembling a game, which was more than I expected when I started.

Overall I didn’t dedicate enough time to it due to various real-life issues that came up, but for the time I spent i’m happy with the end result, especially the art, which for me was a big challenge as I really never do my own art for whatever reason. The super low-res art style is really fun to play with, animation has to be really short and easy because of the limited space involved. I’m not really that coherent at the moment but apart from having no sound, no timelapse, barely any updating (basically all the things I wanted to do right but were ultimately cast aside) and only one incredibly short level, i’m happy with the result and getting into the correct mindset to produce prototypes this fast.

Anyway enough of that, go check out my game Every Man Is An Island!

Click to go to the entry page!

Yours faithfully, sincerely and covered in bees,

brian.

I’m finally getting somewhere, I wasted far too much time trying to do music I don’t have the experience to make, but now i’ve done the majority of art, got a bit more animation to do and i’m nearly done with character movement.

Here’s the current build (in Unity so plays in the browser):

http://www.billyfletcher.com/LD/Build1.html

WASD or Arrow keys to move around, that’s all it does at the moment!

11:33pm Saturday Night

Lots of love,
brian

Hi gang, in this LD i’m going to be making a platformer, taking place in a series of islands, inter-connected by the floating bodies of dead sailors killed in the battle that precedes the events of the game. They’ll act as buoyant objects, weighed down the more you stand on them at a speed relative to the size of the body (fat dudes are more buoyant!).

Here’s a mockup that i’ll take the sprites out of, went super super low-res pixel art style, mainly because it’s easy but also because if I feel like it I can mix it in with the Pretentious Art Game theme and do some references to Passage.

Yeah i'm terrible with art so the dead bodies don't look like anything at all really!

Just got to do the enemies and some smaller props, but because i’m using Unity and i’ve done a few platformers before I don’t think i’ll have any problem getting the coding done and somewhat playable by the end of the night. I’d like to do some fancy animated water (ala Dock’s tumbledrop) but we’ll see.

Ciao for now!

First time i’ve entered one of these, i’ve been interested in the competition/contest malarkey and I look forward to having to be startlingly productive over a short period of time.

I’ll doing my project in Unity, hopefully with an emphasis on music and audio in general, depending on how I can fit to the theme, I feel with all the features available in Unity i’ll have more of a chance as a new guy to get something done in the time available. I’ll hopefully be timelapse recording the development process although if that doesn’t work for any reason i’ll post updates as I go. This should be totally rad so good luck everyone!